The sky isn't falling, exactly. America isn't on a fast track to irrelevance. Even in a state of total neglect, we could probably shamble along as a disheveled superpower for a few more decades.
But all empires end, and the warning signs of American decline seem to be blinking more consistently. In the latest annual "prosperity index" published by the Legatum Institute, a London-based research firm, the United States ranks as the ninth most prosperous country in the world. That's five notches lower than last year, when America ranked No. 4.
The article went on to say that the United States is among only 5 countries in the world where the "life satisfaction" index is in decline. I'm not sure how this Institute measures happiness but their finding was this: Happiness in America is in decline.
I don't have any inside track on all the reasons why happiness in America might be in decline if in fact this study is accurate. But if there is a decline in "life satisfaction" in America, could part of it be that we have become so consumed with ourselves in America, so protective of our own, so focused and fearful of losing what is ours that we have lost sight of the simple joy of assisting others through life.
If that's part of the equation, I think we who are followers of Jesus, growing in our desire to follow Him for the sake of others will experience more and more the abundance of life Jesus offers. Not to mention the fact that we will shine brighter and brighter as the world around us seems to be getting darker and darker. I remember John Wimber once said, "Things are going to get better and better and worse and worse at the same time.
I agree that happiness is very much in decline. I've found the more we disconnect from real things and fill ourselves with whats available (facebook, addictions, tv, etc) the less content we are with life. This is the downward spiral as we satisfy our selfish desires.
ReplyDeleteWe can become whoever we want through virtual means and the 'new wonders' of our technological world, but at what cost?
What I mean to say is that we have more and more distractions available to us now; thats why I think we are becoming more and more unhappy.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, too, if part of our discontent is really a cover-up for anxiety. Everything that I've learned about postmodernism as a theory (the relative nature of truth and the post-Christian tendencies to question or deconstruct larger belief structures like the Biblical ones we believe) seems to be playing out in the world I'm in. When faith is condescendingly re-termed "myth" then people who have only a theory about God and not a passionate Relationship with Him are battered into giving up.
ReplyDeleteI pray that Jesus will give us (the church) first the Love that we need to see through anger and cynicism to the hurt that lies underneath. And secondly the Power to actually do something to help; words of knowledge or prophecy that cut to the quick and show our friends that God really does know and care about them.
We cannot be sucked under by the riptide current of cynicism that is so pervasive in our nation. We have SO MUCH! Let's live this way.
President Jimmy Carter may have had what many consider to be an unsuccessful presidency, but he was on the money when he said "Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns" back in 1979. I wonder if the same can't be said of the majority of today's American Christians--our identity is no longer defined by what we do (being Christ-like), but by what we own (Slick websites, palatial church campuses, seemingly limitless technological resources, etc.)? Not that possessing these things is wrong, but one could make the argument these things now largely define us as American Christians in the early 21st century.
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